Jack of All Trades

A man takes a job as a school janitor and works his way to school
principal, never blind to either the good or the harm he might do. The
man, dogged and easy-going at once, finds his true métier. He
makes scores, then hundreds, of children happier, and many look up to
him.

Jack Yates says he managed those feats through the help of many
people along the way. But, questioning him in his moderately large
office at Hawkins Elementary School here, you know there's more to it
than that. He was the one who did double duty as custodian and
student-teacher, sat through more than a dozen years of night school in
two decades, and left his 3rd grade classroom to take the job that, he
jokes, hoar-frosted his full head of brown hair. At 42, he may not have
more than the usual load of debts, but he's unusually ready to
acknowledge them.

Starting with his parents. He grew up on the northwest edge of
Detroit, the son of a homemaker and a city policeman. His father, Ray,
got lucky and drew crowd-control duty at old Tiger Stadium. In that
setting, the father passed his keen love of sports, particularly
baseball, to his only son.

At 9 or 10, Jack started collecting baseball cards with their
romance of names and numbers—which may today, he says, account
for his facility with student names. He's got most of the 530 children
at Hawkins down pat.

In his father's house, the mostly short-stop dreamed of life as a
pro. "We tried to talk him into going to college," says his mother,
Ruth, "but he said he didn't want to go then."

When Jack graduated from Henry Ford High School in 1977, Ray had
retired, and his parents had moved into what was then the country town
of Fowlerville, northwest of the city. Jack's sister, Barb Young, lived
not far away in Brighton and was driving a school bus for the Brighton
Area schools.

The young Yates needed a paying job. His sister suggested he try the
district's maintenance department.

Filling in for others led to a full-time position at what was then
Miller Elementary School. "I realized," Yates later wrote in an article
for Principal magazine, "that if I worked hard, I could become a
head custodian, work days, and make a little more money."

And sure enough, he was 19 when he landed the job of head custodian
at Lindbom Elementary School, supervising two older people on the
afternoon shift.

One little girl is already sitting pale and anxious on the edge of
the nurse's cot in the office suite at Hawkins Elementary when Von
Hardesty, a classroom assistant who helps with putting children on
the buses at the end of the day, walks in.

Nothing's unusual for a suburban elementary school a week
before the close of the year. Yates, the principal, still has a heap
of thank-you notes to write to parents who helped at the spring
fund-raiser. The courtyard garden with its native wildflowers, its
butterflies, and its timid bat clinging to the wall goes unused
because teachers are trying to squeeze in last bits of curriculum.
And a stomach virus may be rampaging through the younger
pupils.

"A 1st grader just threw up on the sidewalk," Hardesty reports
to the two secretaries and a teacher or two milling in the office.
She has come in to call the child's parent. Yates is passing
through.

"Just slosh a bucket of water," the former custodian says,
stopping for a second.

"Ah," responds Hardesty, who hadn't thought of that.

A few years later, Yates had signed up for some classes at Washtenau
Community College. More important, he was about to meet his future
wife, Debbi Walker.

In the summer of 1983, Walker was working as a custodian, while
Yates had a temporary assignment to strip and refinish gym floors in
the district. He came to her school, and co-workers made sure they sat
together at lunch. They were married two years later, making Yates an
instant father. Debbi, seven years older than her new husband, had a
7-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy from a previous marriage, whom he
adored from the start.

‘Somebody like Jack who's been on the inside
has an advantage.’

David Pruneau,

Superintendent,

Brighton School District

"We knew I could further myself in my life," he says now about those
years. "There was something out there."

But baseball couldn't be the means; it was too unpredictable for a
family man. And, besides, he found himself drawn in another direction:
teaching. He not only liked being around Jessica and Josh, his new
children, but also the students at school.

The teachers at Lindbom, who had allowed him to make up for the
temporary loss of physical education classes by getting up some games
of floor hockey and volleyball in the gym, told him he had a gift for
working with children. And the youngsters made him feel good.

Soon he was taking classes toward an education degree at Eastern
Michigan University in Ypsilanti. The drive from Brighton was 35
minutes each way, and he did it several times a week for more than
eight years, but education seemed to make sense in a way it had not in
high school.

"College actually came easier to me," he says. "My priorities were
different."

The priorities included Jessica and Josh, and he coached their
baseball and softball teams, eventually becoming vice president of the
youth group that ran the sports program. Debbi matched her schedule to
the children's by driving a lunch wagon for the school system.

Yates transferred in 1988 to Maltby Middle School, where he
supervised five people and made more money. He had another motivation
for the change. The middle school then occupied the same building as
the superintendent, and he wanted to be seen.

He decided, too, that he would try to teach elementary or middle
school, where men are rare compared with high school. He added three
minors—science, social studies, and English—to his
elementary education major. "I was thinking about how can I be
marketable."

When at last it came time for his student-teaching, administrators
rearranged his custodial schedule so he could be in the classroom at
Hilton Road Elementary School in the morning. To fit it all in, Yates
worked from 7:45 in the morning to midnight.

"I would go to Maltby in my shirt and tie and then change into my
T-shirt and jeans," he recalled for the Detroit Free Press the
following September. "I just put it on automatic pilot and did it."

Just as at Lindbom, he had boosters at Maltby, among them Principal
Rae Ann McCall. She recalled putting 250 youngsters jostling for places
in the lunch line in Yates' care for a minute when she was called to
the office.

"When I came back, all the kids were sitting down," she told the
newspaper. "We've used his technique ever since."

Yates is going over a mental checklist for the Principal's Pals
lunch—pizza ordered, certificates in hand, Kool-Aid in the
fridge. By the time he gets to the school library satisfied by the
preparations, six tables have filled with squirming honorees.

"Hi, guys," the principal begins, speaking just loud enough to
be heard at the back in a voice with no rough edges. He's dapper in a
dark suit and bright white shirt, but it's hard to take the baseball
player out of him—the ruddy complexion, the gap between the
front teeth overhung by a generous mustache. He looks powerful and
friendly at the same time, a combination not lost on Derek, who gets
his certificate for exercising self-control.

The old principal was "scary," the 5th grader remarks. "She had
long fingernails."

Yates, on the other hand, gets Derek's outspoken
endorsement—both as a teacher and a principal.

The 5th grader even shows the visiting reporter how Yates
handled an acting-up Derek a couple of years ago.

"'OK, don't do that,'" says Derek, imitating Yates, who taught
him science. The boy shrugs, still in character. "'I'm giving you 10
minutes of wall time during recess.'"

Heather Allen, a classroom veteran of more than two
decades, helped interview Yates when he applied for a teaching job at
Hawkins Elementary School. But she had met him years before at Lindbom
Elementary, where he had come to her classroom to fix a radiator. A
good encounter, a working radiator, she remembers.

The job in leafy, well-clipped Brighton, where a subdivision
immodestly called "The Dominion" recently opened, drew about 60
applicants. But thanks to his years in the 7,000-student district,
Yates stood out as a known and respected quantity.

‘We used Mr. Yates as an example of someone
who put forth effort, and made a success of his life. They know him,
so it means more.’

Peg Regruth,

Teacher,

Hawkins
Elementary School

And so it was that one day Jack Yates set up chairs for the
district's new-teacher orientation and the next, the 32-year-old former
custodian sat in one.

In professional terms, that first year was the hardest of his life,
he says now, sharing the sentiment of many who have gone to the
blackboard before him. "You have to plan for lessons every day," he
says. "You have to entertain every day, be on top of your game, and
have that good attitude."

But soon the tension melted into a new goal, his wife recalls. "He
would always say, 'You know, I'm going to be principal. I'm going to be
Hawkins' principal.' "

Yates started back to school at Eastern Michigan in the mid-'90s,
earning a master's degree in educational leadership in 1999. By that
time, he had proved himself as a teacher and a professional peer.

"He's a delight as a colleague," offers Allen, who taught alongside
him in 3rd grade for his 8½ years as a teacher. "Easygoing,
wonderful with kids, fun to be around."

Those qualities served Yates well when the principal's job at
Hawkins opened up in 2000.

"Somebody like Jack who's been on the inside has an advantage," says
Brighton's superintendent, David Pruneau. Roughly translated, that
meant Yates pulled ahead because, in addition to knowing the school and
the district, he had gained people's trust.

"I've known administrators who have put on a show of being positive,
but it's manipulative," says Allen, the veteran teacher. "He's
completely genuine."

He also brought a style to the job different from that of his
predecessor, who had been known to clash with a teacher or two. Yates,
in the term of just about everyone interviewed for this story, as well
as by self-description, is "a people person," trying always to meet
others more than halfway.

Not surprisingly, he was the clear favorite of the committee of
Hawkins staff members who participated in the selection. About the only
downside to the change, according to Pruneau, who has pushed promotion
from within, was the loss of the elementary school's only male
teacher.

Yates got the job, but as an "interim" because he lacked
administrative experience. A year later, the modifier was dropped. With
the new position went a $22,000 salary hike, from $53,000 a year to
$75,000, a considerably larger increase than many teachers get going to
the principal's office. Typically, teachers are higher up the
experience ladder before moving to administration.

Today, Pruneau is confident of Yates' abilities, cautioning only
that "being a nice guy, he sometimes struggles with the tough
decisions."

‘I think students don't want to disappoint
him. A lot of them don't have a father figure.’

Von Hardesty,

Special education
teacher,

Hawkins Elementary
School

Yates also rates well with a top local union official. The principal
is making his experience in the boiler room and the classroom pay off,
says Jim Ponscheck, who until June was the director of the Brighton
Education Association. On a district committee devoted to the concerns
of support-staff members, "he brought that sensitivity with him," says
Ponscheck. "It played well with that group."

Within the school, the principal wins kudos from teachers and
support workers alike, including 26-year-old head custodian Timothy A.
Parks, who says the school "feels like a family."

A classroom assistant takes aside the reporter to make sure it's
understood that the children weren't putting on a show for outsiders
when they planted themselves beside the principal, waiting to be
recognized, or lunged at his waist for a hug.

"I think students don't want to disappoint him," says Von Hardesty,
who works in the school's one special education classroom. "A lot of
them don't have a father figure."

Yates is a guest of honor in Hardesty's classroom, where the
children have prepared a full eggs-and-pancake breakfast for him and
other notables such as the school's part-time social worker and its
speech pathologist.

Amid the many words that adorn the walls, one stands out. On a
big red cutout of a heart, bold black letters spell "effort." At a
low point in the life of the classroom, the adults chose that as the
group's watchword.

Ally, 9 years old but small for her age because of a thyroid
ailment that for a while played havoc with her development, bounces
over to Yates and pipes,"I love you."

"What did we learn about Mr. Yates this year?" queries her
teacher, Peg Regruth. Then to the visitor: "We used Mr. Yates as an
example of someone who put forth effort, and made a success of his
life. They know him, so it means more."

When her teacher is done, Ally eagerly responds to the
question. "I learned you used to be a janitor," she recites, "then a
teacher, then a principal."

Don't tell Ally and her schoolmates if ambition should be made of
sterner stuff. Many believe in just what they see before them: Jack
Yates, principal, success, and real nice guy.

Coverage of leadership issues in education—including
governance, management, and labor relations—is supported by the
Broad Foundation.

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